Irelands Eye

Last weeked, myself and the financial controller took a spin to Dublin for a great big whoppin’ double meetup with some of the boards crowd. These are the results of the first of those two meetups, off Howth harbour on an island called Ireland’s Eye. I think my only advise to anyone who is thinking of taking the boat across to the island would be; Don’t go if you don’t like birds. If you inherited your distaste for being too close to winged creatures through generations of your family watching Hitchcock movies like I did, you probably won’t like the island.

Having said that though, it was quite pleasant out there. Warm yet cold, still yet windy. It’s a small island with a uphill slope, that day only climbed by a healthy mix of the stupid and the adventurous. Sadly I was the former. While following Sebzy up the hill, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a freakishly large seagull that had been perched on a rock not 20 feet from me had taken flight. Thought nothing of it, until the bastard started dive-bombing me. After a few close misses and one or two too close to call, I imagined that by the time I reached the top of the hill I’d be either completely bald or completely bald and one-eyed.

No, that’s not me but you get the idea. It was fairly Hitchcock. While trying to find a suitably safe method of getting off the hill and back to the relative safety of near sea level, I managed to get myself into a dead-end no less than twice. I was obviously paying more attention to not being swiped at by countless seagulls on the way down. I decided to take a route through the long grass and took an ‘as the bird flies’ route to a small church where the rest of the group were hiding. So I bound through the waist high grass as fast as my legs could carry me, fearful of what no doubt lives in the grass. Mostly ticks and spiders. Makes me shudder even now thinking about it.

After a sandwich and a refreshing walk on the beach, it appeared the weather was about to break. I think at that stage most of us had had our fill of the gulls, insects and general island life so we retreated to the relative safety of the short grass and sheltered rocks where a group of other tourists waited for the arrival of the boat back to Howth harbour.

Back on the boat, we took a quick tour around the island to see the gannets and if there were any puffins around.

It was good to be back on dry land again though… Managed to get several decent shots out there thankfully, something I hoped I could replicate the next day in Wicklow. Time will tell. There are more of these on flickr.

In other news, after 18 or so months of sitting in the garage, slowly rotting away I managed to start up my motorbike today for the first time! New battery, bit of praying, bit of spluttering and choking as it sprang into life but then the magic happened. Roared into life, still sounds as good as it did back on the French highways and byways. Pity it’s going on the ol’ auction block…